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Demanded Quotes (displaying: 1 - 30 of 169 quotes )

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Theme:
Lennie rolled off the bunk and stood up, and the two of them started for the door. Just as they reached it, Curley bounced in."You seen a girl around here?" he demanded angrily. George said coldly, "'Bout half an hour ago maybe."Well, what the hell was she doin'?"George stood still, watching the angry little man. He said insultingly, "She said--she was lookin' for you."Curley seemed really to see George for the first time. His eyes flashed over George, took in his height, measured his reach, looked at his trim middle. "Well, which way'd she go?" he demanded at last."I dunno," said George. "I didn't watch her go."Curley scowled at him, and turning, hurried out the door. George said, "Ya know, Lennie, I'm scared I'm gonna tangle with that bastard myself. I hate his guts. Jesus Christ! Come on. There won't be a damn thing left to eat.
John Steinbeck
Theme:
The Party denied the free will of the individual - and at the sametime it exacted his willing self-sacrifice. It denied his capacity tochoose between two alternatives - and at the same time it demanded that heshould constantly choose the right one. It denied his power to distinguishgood and evil - and at the same time spoke pathetically of guilt andtreachery. The individual stood under the sign of economic fatality, awheel in a clockwork which had been wound up for all eternity and couldnot be stopped or influenced - and the Party demanded that the wheelshould revolt against the clockwork and change its course. There wassomewhere an error in the calculation; the equation did not work out.
Arthur Koestler
Theme:
But there were other forces at work in the cub, the greatest of which was growth. Instinct and law demanded of him obedience. But growth demanded disobedience...In the end, one day, fear and obedience were swept away by the rush of life, and the cub straddled and sprawled toward the entrance.
Jack London
What is that apathetic being doing?' she demanded, pushing the thick entangled locks from her wasted face. 'Has he fallen into a lethargy, or is he dead?
Emily Bronte
Theme:
Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made.
Henry David Thoreau
Theme:
So: ‘Why did you laugh?’ demanded Philippa, and shook Jerott’s hand off her arm. ‘Oh, that?’ said Lymond. ‘But, my dear child, the picture was irresistible. Daddy, afflicted but purposeful, ransacking the souks of the Levant for one of his bastards, with an unchaperoned North Country schoolgirl aged—what? twelve? thirteen?—to help change its napkins when the happy meeting takes place.… A gallant thought, Philippa,’ said Lymond kindly, sitting down at the table. ‘And a touching faith in mankind. But truly, all the grown-up ladies and gentlemen would laugh themselves into bloody fluxes over the spectacle. Have some whatever-it-is.
Dorothy Dunnett
Theme:
This,” Alaric explained to Sarah in what he thought was a kindly voice, “isn’t love you’re feeling. Only dopamine. Because Felix isn’t like anyone else you know. Being a creature of the night, he’s new and exciting and activates a neurotransmitter in your brain that releases feelings of euphoria when you’re around him…especially because you know you can never actually be together, and he seems complicated, and perhaps even sensitive and vulnerable at times. But I can assure you: he’s anything but.” “How dare you?” Sarah demanded hotly. “It isn’t dopa…whatever! It’s love! Love!
Meg Cabot
Theme:
Why are you drinking? demanded the little prince."So that I may forget," replied the tippler."Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who was already sorry for him."Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head."Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him."Ashamed of drinking!
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Theme:
the world-view of the Party imposed itselfmost successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violationsof reality, because they never fully grasped the enormityof what was demanded of them, and were not sufficientlyinterested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simplyswallowed everything, and what they swallowed did themno harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain ofcorn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
George Orwell
Theme:
What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaninglessness in rational terms.
Viktor E. Frankl
Theme:
What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of the tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?—startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why it was so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.
Virginia Woolf
Theme:
Elizabeth was counting on Marco to keep cousin Mary occupied until after the board meeting was over. A piece of cheese might catch a mouse, but an afternoon alone with a muscular masseur would ensnare her cousin far more effectively. And afterwards, while Mary lay sated and sleeping upon a massage table, wiser heads could determine the company's future. There were times, Elizabeth thought, when success in business demanded utter ruthlessness.
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Theme:
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
Robertson Davies
Theme:
Now as I climb this mountain, from the top of which I shall see Africa, my mind is printed with brown-paper parcels and your faces. I have been stained by you and corrupted. You smelt so unpleasant, too, lining up outside doors to buy tickets. All were dressed in indeterminate shades of grey and brown, never even a blue feather pinned to a hat. None had the courage to be one thing rather than another. What dissolution of the soul you demanded in order to get through one day, what lies, bowings, scrapings, fluency and servility! How you chained me to one spot, one hour, one chair, and sat yourselves down opposite! How you snatched from me the white spaces that lie between hour and hour and rolled them into dirty pellets and tossed them into the wastepaper basket with your greasy paws. Yet those were my life.
Virginia Woolf
Theme:
For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.
Bertrand Russell
Theme:
I'm Gennie." She responded instinctively to the smile Shelby shot her before she untangled herself from her brother. "I'm glad to meet you."Pushing seventy, hmmm?" Shelby said cryptically to Grant before she clasped Gennie's hand. "We'll have to get to know each other so you can tell me how you tolerate this jerk's company for more than give minutes at a time. Alan's in the throne room with the MacGregor," she continued before Grant could retort. "Has Grant given you a rundown on the inmates?"An abbreviated version," Gennie replied, instantly charmed."Typical." She hooked her arm through Gennie's. "Well, sometimes it's best to jump in feetfirst. The most important thing to remember is not to let Daniel intimidate you. What extraction are you?"French mostly. Why?"It'll come up."How was your honeymoon?" Grant demanded, wanting to veer away from the subject that would, indeed, come up. Shelby beamed at him. "I'll let you know when it's over. How's your cliff?"Still standing.
Nora Roberts
Theme:
That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board. Yves had watched them for a long time. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun; Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall; and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers; impossible to find oneself on those plains and not be troubled by that cruel and elegant, dogmatic and pagan presence. The town was full of tourists, with their cameras, their three-quarter coats, bright flowered dresses and shirts, their children, college insignia, Panama hats, sharp, nasal cries, and automobiles crawling like monstrous gleaming bugs over the laming, cobblestoned streets. Tourist buses, from Holland, from Denmark, from Germany, stood in the square before the cathedral. Tow-haired boys and girls, earnest, carrying knapsacks, wearing khaki-colored shorts, with heavy buttocks and thighs, wandered dully through the town. American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character. All of the beauty of the town, all the energy of the plains, and all the power and dignity of the people seemed to have been sucked out of them by the cathedral. It was as though the cathedral demanded, and received, a perpetual, living sacrifice. It towered over the town, more like an affliction than a blessing, and made everything seem, by comparison with itself, wretched and makeshift indeed. The houses in which the people lived did not suggest shelter, or safety. The great shadow which lay over them revealed them as mere doomed bits of wood and mineral, set down in the path of a hurricane which, presently, would blow them into eternity. And this shadow lay heavy on the people, too. They seemed stunted and misshapen; the only color in their faces suggested too much bad wine and too little sun; even the children seemed to have been hatched in a cellar. It was a town like some towns in the American South, frozen in its history as Lot's wife was trapped in salt, and doomed, therefore, as its history, that overwhelming, omnipresent gift of God, could not be questioned, to be the property of the gray, unquestioning mediocre.
James Baldwin
Theme:
I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love & duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting & challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.
Rose Kennedy
Theme:
You miss the whole point, Pastor. What I did was wrong, but I couldn't stop myself. Why couldn't I stop myself? Because of what I am. I wasn't born this way. I became a man with a lot of problems, not because of my DNA, but because of what society demanded. Lock ' em up. Punish the hell out of them. And if you make a few monsters along the way, to bad.
John Grisham
Theme:
I just can't help thinking what a real shake up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems..." And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?" I demanded. They'd die more like mad dogs, I think--snarling & snapping at each other & biting their own tails." I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's deprived of the consolation of literature?" In one of two ways," he said, "petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system." Neither one very pleasant, I expect," I suggested. No," said Castle the elder. "For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!
Kurt Vonnegut
Theme:
...If there's a noise in the woods, and there's nobody around to hear it, is it really a noise?"Of course it is," she replied calmly."How did you reach that conclusion?" Beldin demanded."Because there's no such thing as an empty place, uncle. There are always creatures around --wild animals, mice, insects, birds --and they can all hear."But what if there weren't? What if the woods are truly empty?"Why waste your time talking about an impossibility?
David Eddings
Theme:
Miss Polly actually stamped her foot in irritation. "There you go like the rest," she shouted. "What game?" At last Nancy told her all about the story of how the crutches arrived instead of a doll, and how Pollyanna's father had taught her that there was always something to be glad about. Miss Polly couldn't believe it. "how can someone ever be glad of crutches?" she demanded to know. "Simple" said Nancy. "In Pollyanna's case, she could be glad she didn't need them!
Eleanor Porter
Theme:
Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean--for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit. It's difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they've come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I've always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I've always recognized it at once--and it's the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.
Ayn Rand
Theme:
Dictionopolis is the place where all the words in the world come from. They're grown right here in our orchards."I didn't know that words grew on trees," said Milo timidly."Where did you think they grew?" shouted the earl irritably. A small crowd began to gather to see the little boy who didn't know that letters grew on trees."I didn't know they grew at all," admitted Milo even more timidly. Several people shook their heads sadly."Well, money doesn't grow on trees, does it?" demanded the count."I've heard not," said Milo."Then something must. Why not words?" exclaimed the undersecretary triumphantly. The crowd cheered his display of logic and continued about its business.
Norton Juster
Theme:
Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? You belong by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly. You belong with the legions of toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong with the oxen and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and stenches. There are the stale vegetables now. Those potatoes are rotting. Smell them, damn you, smell them. And yet you dare to open the books, to listen to beautiful music, to learn to love beautiful paintings, to speak good English, to think thoughts that none of your own kind thinks, to tear yourself away from the oxen and the Lizzie Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a woman who is a million miles beyond you and who lives in the stars! Who are you? and what are you? damn you! And are you going to make good?
Jack London
Theme:
Chater: You dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction!Septimus: Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family.
Tom Stoppard
Theme:
Who will marry me? No one wants a girl who is not a virgin."I will. I'll marry you."Ma non posso sposarti." "And why can't you marry me?"Perche sei pazzo!"And why am I crazy?"Perche vuoi sposarmi."Because I want to marry you. Carina, ti amo," he explained, and he drew her gently back down to the pillow. "Te amo molto."Tu sei pazzo," she murmured in reply, flattered. "Perche?"Because you say you love me. How can you love a girl who is not a virgin?"Because I can't marry you."She bolted right up again in a threatening rage. "Why can't you marry me?" she demanded, ready to clout him again if he gave an uncomplimentary reply. "Just because I am not a virgin?"No, no darling. Because you're crazy.
Joseph Heller
Then what is magic for?" Prince Lr demanded wildly. "What use is wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder hard, to keep from falling. Schmedrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for.
Peter S. Beagle
Theme:
They are a lie, as our-no, your peole are a lie!" "Your skin is as dark as mine"' Malice reminded him. "You are a drow, though you have never learned what that means!" "Oh, I do know what it menas." "Then act by the rules!" Matron Malcius demanded. "Your rules? Drizzt growled back. "But your rules are a damned lie as well, as great as lie as that filthy spider you claim as a deity!" "A ture god damn you all!" "And damn that Spider Qyeen as well!
R. A. Salvatore
Theme:
...my beloved Eudosia [a member of Buckley's household staff], who is Cuban, very large, quite old, and altogether superstitious, and speaks only a word or two of English (even though she has been with us for 19 years), is quite certain that the gentleman who raped the 16-year-old girl in New Caanan three years ago and escaped has successfully eluded the police only because of his resourceful determination to ravage Eudosia before he dies. Accordingly she demanded, and I gave her, a shotgun, into which I have inserted two empty shells. Still, Eudosia with blank cartridges is more formidable than Eugene McCarthy with The Bomb.
William F. Buckley, Jr.